So there I was looking to see if anyone had either of the last two Marlow books I wanted @ a price I could afford ~ which is becoming more & more unlikely each passing year. Anyway 55 pounds was a steal so I hastily added Runaway Home to my basket & only later looked to see where the book was coming from.
I am so utterly stoked. I know. I know. Small things give me great joy! This is the storefront of Johnston's Marine Stores on the Isle of Arran! Scotland! An Island! The thought of my book travelling from an island in Scotland to an Island in Australia just tickles my funny bone, don'tcha know. It has added untold value to the book for me ~ for nebulous & quite surrealistic reasons ~ though I have yet to work out why a marine store is selling good quality used books!
My Grandfather, who spoke with a thick Scots burr until the day he died, was incredibly reticent about the land of his birth. Having travelled there I sort of see why because there is no doubt he had a much, much better life in Australia than he would have had in Scotland but his silence also cut his family off from their heritage & their roots. There are things he let slip that one day I might have the time to investigate fully because, comparatively speaking, he didn't come from complete poverty like so many of our Scots migrants did. His father was a gamekeeper so there was always food on the table but my great~grandfather died early from a ferret bite ~ which just seems astounding now. My great~grandmother was a tiny little woman [by all accounts] with a flame of red hair, who raised their 8 children alone. She came from the Isle of Skye [further north than Arran] & was the last Gaelic speaker in our family.
So when this book arrives [a book I never much liked] it will carry something of Scotland with it. So odd because it is a story about a very English family. But each time I hold it in my hands I will remember where it came from & my grandfather, & my great~grandmother on Skye speaking the Gaelic & a vast stretch of history encompassing Skara Brae & the Lewis Chessmen & all the Standing Stones that ever were & the ancient henges, the Cruthi who held the East & the Scots who invaded from Ireland...which just goes to show how very, very odd my mind really is.
What's more, Johnston's holds other titles I want. Because it is where it is I may be able to afford those titles before someone else nabs them ~ but isn't life odd?
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